i don’t understand this, they are both equally important, so why use a less secure unlock on one?
In: 5
Generally due to convenience; you can set a password on both Android and IOS though. My work phone enforces a password.
Because with a PIN you only have three attempts to get it right. With a password you usually have unlimited attempts.
It’s a heritage thing. While computers have had keyboards since forever, phones had numbered buttons until quite recently, where typing a long password was majorly inconvenient. While phones became more like computers, both in design and importance, the PIN unlock has remained the default method. Password, fingerprint, facial recognition and others have since been added.
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I would say it’s probably down to convenience.. how many people are in such a rush sometimes that it’s far easier to type a 4 number pin, trace a pattern, or simply look at your phone (all possible one handed), rather than trying to type in a password that possibly needs two hands to be as fast. People want their phones unlocked *now* not in 15 seconds time.
Also if you consider that prior to smart phones, mobiles only had number buttons.. yes you could type words but only if you pressed the number key 1 – 3 or 4 times per letter.. that could have led to a very lengthy password on a Nokia if lettered passwords were possible.
Computer scientist here.
A computer is a much more “open” device than your phone. You have much more ways to interact with your PC. It is very easy to run other software if you have access to the computer. Just plug in an USB Stick and run an alternative operating system with some software.
If your hardware isn’t encrypted, this software can get the hash that you use for authentication (for example on a windows 10 machine). The hash by itself doesn’t allow for authentication, but you can check if a password is correct by comparing it to the hash if you apply the same hashing methods that windows did. A 4 digit password only allows for 10⁴ = 10000 different variations. This would be easily solvable in a second by most processors. At this point, your PIN would be compromised already and the attacker would have full access to your account on the computer.
For phones, this is harder. New phones are generally encrypted by default and have a TPM (Trusted Platform Module) that can detect malicious attempts and won’t allow any attacks. New PCs have them as well but it’s not everywhere yet.
If you activate Bitlocker and use a TPM, you would be safer like on a phone. But this isn’t activated by default so Windows should recommend you to use a strong password just to be safe.
For starters computers offer the option of a PIN (default in laptops usually) and you can have a password on a phone. The main reason is convenience. When you turn on your computer you type in the password once and then go on to use it for a few hours. Your phone however you use throughout the day and you keep locking and unlocking it as you take it in and out of your pocket, so a pin is quick and easy enough to input every time you take it out while offering some security.
Phones used to only have number pads, no keyboard. It was just easier to use a PIN than using the numbers to type in a password.
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